Standard Bank website gives virus warning

Tom Manners

Tom Manners is now a freelance journalist, previously full-time at MyBroadband from 2009 to 2010. Tom focuses on cellular technologies, gadgets, mobile phones and broadcasting....

Full Profile

E-mail

It has emerged that Standard Bank internet banking users with Kaspersky antivirus installed on their systems were receiving warning notifications that Trojan downloader .js.pegel.e was downloaded from the Standard Bank log in page and that it was isolated and neutralised.

Ian David, IT Support Engineer at Biodata – a local distributor and support centre for Kaspersky products – confirmed that the company had been contacted by several Standard Bank users regarding the error.

According to Brent Bartlett, CEO of Netwise Media, Standard Bank is currently advising their clients to download the free AVG program for their anti-virus purposes.  “We have advised all our clients to not use the Standard Bank web site for internet banking until we can confirm that it has been removed,” said Bartlett.

Standard Bank however revealed that the Trojan antivirus was an “incorrect detection” on Kaspersky’s part adding that “It appears the Kaspersky definitions contain an entry that falsely identifies legitimate functionality as malicious”

According to company spokesperson Ross Lindstrom it is safe for Standard Bank users to access the company’s internet banking portal and that it “can confirm that there is no Trojan on the Internet Banking portal. It appears that clients using certain Kaspersky Antivirus products have been affected”